http://shelby-lee-adams.blogspot.com/

with the following great quote:

“These portraits are, in a way, self-portraits that represent a long autobiographical exploration of creativity, imagination, vision, repulsion and salvation. My greatest fear as a photographer is to look into the eyes of my subject and not see my own reflection.”

But that’s a digression. What is most interesting about Avedon’s portraiture was its utter reductiveness…and the fact that he famously stood next to his 8×10, not behind it.

it’s especially compelling to me because I have two portrait shows on my near-future roster:
Benjamin Donaldson’s Summerland opens next Friday (3/16) and my summer group show, which I’m co-curating with Joerg is tentatively titled The New American Portrait.

Look at the Monroe portrait – there is no connection between the photographer and Monroe – she is connecting with herself. In a similar way, the Cambodia portraits show no connection with the photographer – they are connecting with their terror and the camera as an instrument of that terror.

I don’t know what connection August Sander had with his subjects – when I look at his pictures I am drawn into the people who are portrayed, sucked into their psyches in some strange mysterious way. I don’t see August Sander there.

Of course, there are relationships between photographers and their subjects. But I’m not sure how much this relationship has to do with portraying an authentic vision of a person, whatever authentic means – often it’s just as much to do with colluding with that personon some conscious or subconscious level to create a mythologized person. Isn’t that what Avedon did with In the American West. Majestic stuff, but a mythology all the same.

Photographers, on the whole, (everyone on this blog excepted of course)are not that interesting – and the relationship they muster up in 5 seconds, 5 days or 5 years are not that interesting for the most part – what’s interesting is the person who is photographed and the photographer who can get under their skin is a rare thing indeed.

The other day, I was driving with my family upstate New York. We got hungry and stopped at a diner to eat. I ordered fish and chips. When the food arrived, the plate looked remarkably well prepared, french fries were long and well fried, the fish filets had the same triangular shape as if they came out of the same mold. It even had a leaf of kale with slices of twisted oranges on it. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was about the have one of the worst eating experiences of my life. The fish and french fries were reconstituted, tartar sauce was in two small packaged containers and did not taste like tartar sauce. The kale leaf and orange slices were probably the best thing to eat on the plate, yet they looked so decorative as if they were not meant to be eaten.

This was the day I read Alec’s post on Jeff Wall. Not that there is anything wrong with staging a photograph as artistic expression, the diner experience made me think of it. Photography has an ability to capture a candid moment that no other art form, including film, has. Why take it away from it? In my pictures, I like the imperfections, sometimes a blur can be the element that makes the point, however, it is totally random and can only be seen after the fact.

Same goes for the portraits. One of the recent trends is to isolate the person from any context, but why? I think context is an element we use to bring depth to a portrait. I don’t believe portraits are capable of reading people’s souls or showing us something about their personality, but they are not totally void of these elements either. When I make a portrait, I am making a comment or statement about the person and if all the elements together work to give some meaning to the viewer, the picture is succesful. For me, the process is random and intuitive.

On intention and mugshots, I picked up a copy of Wisconsin Death Trip recently, what a headspin that is, such mysterious portraits and inventions.